Oswiu, King of Kings

by Edoardo Albert

  “Lord.”

  Oswiu walked past the guard and, pulling aside the flap of the tent, went within.

  And stopped.

  It was dark, even darker than without, and he waited, without moving, for his eyes to see.

  But first he listened.

  Breathing. The slow breath of people sleeping.

  One, two, three… He turned his head, listening. Maybe six.

  As he waited, the darkness resolved into shapes. Humps, lying upon the ground: the queen’s women, taking rest where they might, sleeping upon cut rushes or other foliage.

  There. In the centre of the tent.

  A bed.

  Beside it, another, smaller.

  With a small shape lying upon it.

  Ecgfrith?

  He waited, barely breathing, but in the darkness of the tent his eyes could see no more.

  The small shape shifted, turned.

  It moaned, muttered, spoke. “Mummy.”

  Ecgfrith.

  Oswiu stepped forward, leaned down and put one hand over his son’s mouth while the other held him down.

  The boy’s eyes snapped open. He tried to call out, but the hand held the cry back. He looked up, saw the hooded figure standing over him, and began to struggle.

  Oswiu pushed his head down alongside the boy and whispered into his ear. “It’s me.”

  Ecgfrith stopped struggling.

  Under his hand, Oswiu felt the boy’s lips moving, making a word. He felt the sound.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes.”

  Oswiu pulled his head back enough so that the boy could see his face. Keeping one hand over Ecgfrith’s mouth, he put his finger to his lips.

  The boy nodded. He understood.

  “Ecgfrith?” The voice was sleepy, a woman’s voice. The queen’s.

  Oswiu turned to her. Cynewisse was sitting up, resting her weight upon her elbow.

  “Lord.” She glanced at the boy. “Is it time?”

  Oswiu nodded.

  “I thought it would be later.”

  Oswiu shook his head. In the darkness she could not see his face, not under his hood.

  “I will come.” The queen began to sit up.

  Oswiu held his hand up. He shook his head.

  “You are merciful, lord, to spare me this.”

  Oswiu stood up. He was holding the boy’s hand. Ecgfrith scrambled up out of bed and stood beside him.

  “I – I would not see it done, lord.”

  Oswiu, holding the boy’s hand, turned to the entrance of the tent.

  “Cynewisse.”

  Oswiu stopped. He knew that voice of old.

  Slowly, he turned round.

  Penda stood at the back of the tent, holding aside the flap that sealed and joined his tent to that of his queen.

  Penda stared at the hooded figure standing before him.

  “Woden,” he whispered.

  *

  The dream began as it always did.

  He lay among the dead, their bodies piled upon him, holding him immobile with their weight. Only his eye moved, ranging over the field of slaughter.

  There were bodies everywhere, stretching further than his eye might see. But these men, for the most part, lay in the attitude of one taken from water: their faces were pale, their skin slack and no wounds marred their bodies. Water leaked from eyes that stared upwards; hair, lank and wet, dripped on armour and shield.

  Nothing moved, save only the water dripping from the dead.

  Then he heard it.

  The cry of a raven.

  The bird landed among the corpses and dipped its head, uttering its cry once more.

  He tried not to follow it as it moved, lest it see the movement of his eye. The bird dipped its head again, and cawed.

  It was calling.

  That which it called came.

  He was a man, hooded, carrying a staff. He walked over the dead, and their bones cracked beneath his feet, but he did not stumble or fall.

  The raven called and he came.

  His eye turned from one to the other.

  The hooded figure held out his hand.

  The raven took wing in a creak of feathers and landed upon the hooded figure’s arm. It walked, stiff legged, up the man’s arm to his shoulder. There, it dipped its head to his ear.

  From where he lay among the dead, he watched the bird speak to its lord.

  The hooded figure nodded.

  The bird took wing, gliding low over the pale bodies and alighting by the great mound of the dead where he lay. It began to climb, its talons digging into dead flesh.

  The hooded figure turned after the bird and, seeing where it went, followed, its feet grinding over the dead.

  He tried to close his eye, but it would not close. He saw the raven slowly climbing over the dead, but even the fear of its butcher’s beak could not drag his gaze away from the hooded figure. The staff ground into the faces of those it walked over, gouging pale holes in flesh and cracking bone.

  The figure approached until it stood before the mound of bodies that bound him in their prison of flesh. The raven bent low and peered at him, its black eyes glittering. It dipped its head and cawed.

  The hooded figure slowly nodded.

  He had seen where he lay among the dead.

  To the Lord of the Slain, the dead were no disguise.

  Slowly, the hooded figure reached for him.

  *

  That was what woke him. Panting, sweating.

  Penda sat up, staring blind into the dark. “Cynewisse.”

  She wasn’t there. Where was she?

  Then he remembered. The bed he lay upon was in no hall, but under the roof of a tent. Cynewisse was close. He had but to call her.

  “Cynewisse.”

  But his voice stuck in his throat for the dryness of it.

  He stood up, feeling the ground shift beneath him, the blood rush in his head. Then, steadying himself, Penda felt his way to the back of his tent and pulled the flap aside.

  “Cynewisse.”

  Then he saw him: the Lord of the Slain. Men had acclaimed him the All-Father and he had played with that knowledge and used it, but in his heart Penda had known it not to be true.

  Now the Lord of the Slain had come to him.

  “Woden,” Penda whispered.

  The hooded one turned to face him. In the shadows beneath the hood, Penda could see no face. Just darkness.

  Whispers, cries, sobs. The women were waking.

  “Lord, what is it? What happens?”

  Cynewisse looked from one to the other, from the hooded figure she had thought to be her husband to the man, unhooded, who clearly was.

  “Get out,” Penda hissed, not looking at her – not looking at anything save the figure before him. “Everyone out.”

  Cynewisse scrambled from the bed and pulled the flailing, screeching women after her.

  Outside, the guard, seeing the women spill out, made to rush into the tent, but Cynewisse barred his way, grabbing his arms.

  “No!” she said. “Woden is within. It is sacred ground; we may not enter. Run! Fetch the priest. Only he can help the High King.”

  The cries of the women began to echo round the camp, eerie in their pitch of dread. Men woke and came running, and the whispers spread among them: the king, the High King, faced the high king of heaven within. None might enter.

  The kings of the East Angles and the East Saxons, of Gwynedd and Powys, spilled from their tents, asking what had happened, but the High King’s guards held them back.

  Œthelwald pulled his warmaster aside. “Get the men out of here,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

  Together, they ran towards where the men of Deira were camped, calling them from their tents and to their horses.

  In the east, the sky was no longer dark but the grey of approaching dawn.

  In the camp the shouts grew louder.

  From where he watched, Ahlfrith heard the cries and wondered if this was the sign he w
aited on. But there had been no horn sounded, nor fire lit. He looked to the horizon. It would be dawn soon. He turned back to the camp: watching, waiting, listening.

  Coifi twitched, woke.

  He had been dreaming. Aidan had been speaking to him. It had been a good dream.

  A face loomed over him, anxious, hands pulling him upwards.

  “Quick, quick,” said Wihtrun, tugging him to his feet. “The king needs us. He faces the Lord of the Slain alone.” Wihtrun pulled at Coifi. “Come on! Only a priest may enter now. We must go to him.”

  Wihtrun dragged Coifi on. Trying to find the quickest way to the centre of the camp, Wihtrun pulled Coifi down towards the river, for no one had pitched tent on the bank. But the river had risen in the night. Wherever there was a gap in rush and sedge, water flowed outwards, cold and dark. The Winwæd was breaking its banks.

  “We must help the king,” Wihtrun shouted to Coifi as he pulled him along, splashing through the floodwater. Those men who had not gone rushing to the centre of the camp were waking to find water about them, pulling with its cold fingers at the plunder they had accumulated through long months of campaigning. Cries went up as men woke to find their belongings drifting away. Horses and oxen, tethered for the night, began to pull and panic as the water rose about their hooves.

  “Come on,” said Wihtrun. But Coifi had stopped. Wihtrun turned back to him. “Quick,” he said. “Only we can help the king.”

  “Which one?” asked Coifi. There. In the river. The first glimmer of light. It had caught the dawn. He smiled. He saw the working of wyrd.

  “What do you mean, which one?” asked Wihtrun.

  “You’re right,” Coifi said. “There is only one.”

  “Come on!” Wihtrun reached for the old priest, but rather than holding back, Coifi stepped forward and wrapped his thin arms around Wihtrun.

  “Wh-what are you doing?” asked Wihtrun.

  “This,” said Coifi. And he pushed sideways.

  They fell into the river. And the water, in spate, pulled them into itself.

  *

  “Woden.” Penda whispered the name.

  The Lord of the Slain made no move.

  “Would you slay me, Lord of Battles?” Penda looked into the darkness under the hood, but there was only shadow. He pointed at the boy who stood, rigid with fear it seemed, beside the hooded man. “He was for you. You did not have to take him.”

  Still the Master of Words gave no answer.

  Penda felt sweat prick his skin. He could smell it. He knew well the smell, for he had smelled it oft enough on others. He smelled his fear.

  Slowly, the hooded figure moved. In the darkness, Penda could barely see what it was doing, and then the answer came in steel. A sword cold glowed in the darkness. Patterns swam down its length.

  The sword sang for blood.

  The Lord of the Slain was going to kill him.

  Slowly, Penda drew his own sword.

  “They say a wolf will kill you, All-Father. I am Penda. I fight under the banner of the wolf. I am the wolf that will kill you.”

  The swords edged towards each other, points questing, as though smelling for blood. Penda searched in the darkness under the hood, but he could see nothing there, no sign of where the Lord of the Slain looked. Neither, in the darkness, could he see how his enemy stood, for his limbs were concealed beneath his cloak.

  The swords met, sparked, flew apart.

  The raven coughed.

  Though he resisted, every dream that had woken him, screaming, from sleep pulled his eye to the sound.

  Penda glanced.

  In the dark, darker than the darkness, he saw the slaughter bird. He saw its butcher’s bill and its black eye.

  And in that instant, when Penda looked away into the darkness for no reason that he could see, Oswiu struck. He felt the slightest resistance as the sword pierced skin and muscle, then the greater friction as he pushed it deeper and deeper.

  Penda looked down.

  He saw the steel sliding out. He looked up, slack jawed. The sword dropped from his fingers and he clutched his hands to his chest.

  The Lord of the Slain reached up and lowered his hood.

  “It is a new god that slays you, king of the Mercians.”

  Oswiu reversed his grip, and cut downwards through air and dark and flesh and bone.

  Penda fell.

  Oswiu stood over the king of the Mercians, panting, breathless.

  Ecgfrith ran to him and Oswiu put his arm round the boy’s trembling shoulders.

  “Quiet!”

  He listened. Outside, he could hear cries and shouts and calls, but nothing that yet said Ahlfrith had launched his attack.

  Penda was dead.

  But there was still a camp of enemies between them and safety.

  And, sooner or later, someone would come to see what was happening in the tent of the king.

  “Ecgfrith.” Oswiu leaned down to his son, whispering to him. “Take my steel. Set fire to the king’s tent, then come back here. Can you do this?”

  Ecgfrith drew himself up. “Yes. Yes, I can.”

  Oswiu felt the boy setting his strength against the trembling that threatened to disable him. “Go then.”

  While Ecgfrith hastened into Penda’s tent, Oswiu knelt down to do what he had to do.

  He smelled the fire spark, glanced back and saw the first glow of it.

  “Come,” he called to Ecgfrith, and the boy returned. “Stay behind me.” He stood up, his hand holding what he had cut, and made his way towards the entrance to the tent. Through it, he could see the faces assembled around the tent turned towards it. With the silence, they were coming closer, creeping, creeping, to see what happened within.

  Oswiu drew his hood back over his head. He stepped out of the tent. He held up what was in his hand.

  For the last time, Penda’s black eye glittered as it looked upon his men.

  Cynewisse, the queen, stared upon the head of her husband and made no sound but fell to her knees and tore her nails down her cheeks, tracking them with blood. About her, her women wailed, and screamed the judgement the All-Father had brought down upon their king.

  “The Lord of the Slain has killed the king!”

  Behind Oswiu, the king’s tent flared, framing the hooded figure that held the head of the High King aloft.

  “The king is dead! The king is dead!” The cry went up, spreading, leaping from man to man as a fire will leap from roof to roof.

  Panic spread in the wake of the cry, sending men running to tent and pack and horse, to gather whatever they might of their plunder before turning to flight. The gathered kings scattered, calling warmasters and thegns to them, crying the retreat.

  At the centre of the camp, the hooded figure, with the boy yet standing beside him, reached beneath his cloak, pulled forth a horn and sounded it.

  Cynewisse looked up from her grief. Her women yet remained around her, but all the men were running, scattering back to tent and horse and hoard.

  Slowly, she got to her feet. Blood tracks ran down her face. She drew her seax from its sheath.

  “There is no man left to avenge my lord,” she said, “so I will avenge him.” And, screaming, she ran at Oswiu, the knife raised above her head.

  “Daddy!” Ecgfrith pulled his father round, for Oswiu was looking for sign of an answer to his signal as the dawn spread. The king saw the woman running towards him, death in her eyes. His hand went to his sword, then stopped. He would not begin this new life with a woman’s blood on his hands.

  “Catch.” He threw Penda’s head to her, then pointed to the tent. “The rest of him is within.”

  Already the flood water was reaching towards it.

  “Gather him to you while you may.” Oswiu stepped aside so that Cynewisse would not have to go near him to enter the tent.

  Penda’s wife stared at him. “We gave no such honour to your brother,” she said.

  Oswiu nodded. “I know.” He pointed past Cynewiss
e, to her women. “You will need them to carry him forth.”

  As Cynewisse was about to enter the tent, Oswiu called after her: “Bury him well.”

  Cynewisse made to enter the tent, then stopped and looked back to Oswiu. “H-how did he die?”

  “Fighting god.”

  Cynewisse nodded, then looked up at the rich fabric of the tent. “Then let this be his pyre – and mine.” She reached for one of the brands that stood beside the tent and put it to the fabric. Wax soaked, the material caught at once, flaring up in the dim dawn light. Holding Penda’s head, Cynewisse looked one final time at Oswiu.

  “Your god won,” she said. Then, turning, she went within and the flames closed around her.

  “Daddy, Daddy!” Ecgfrith pulled his father round and pointed. More fires were flaring at the edge of the camp furthest from the river, spouting up amid cries and screams and the distant sight of men on horseback. Horns sounded, swords flashed in the first light of morning, and the terror-struck remnants of Penda’s army realized that they had another enemy to contend with as well as the flooding river.

  Ahlfrith had come.

  The rumour of his coming spread quickly, carried by the sounds of panic and the flight of men and riderless horses.

  With the river in spate, the only escape was the bridge. Men on horses laid about them with whips, and some with swords, clearing a path through the crowd that gathered around the bridge. Wagoners, hitching horse or oxen to their wagons, screamed their beasts into the crush. But the bridge was already close packed with the first to leave: the swiftest of the camp followers, running with whatever they could carry. In such a crush, the weakest were soon pushed to the edge of the bridge and began to fall. Caught amid the screaming, shouting people, first one horse and then another began to panic, rearing up then plunging forward. Riders tumbled into the black water, pulling people, heavy laden with plunder, in with them. The first wagon forced its way onto the bridge, but catching there, it blocked the path until the surging crowd pushed it out of the way. One wheel spun over the surging water and then, pushed further, the wagon slowly toppled into the river, pulling its team with it. Laden with plunder, the wagon caught on the bridge’s arch. The flood pushed at it, but the wagon jammed tighter into the arch, and the water, blocked, surged upwards, breaking the banks on either side of the bridge and sweeping away many of the people who were fighting to get to safety.